Murder Rock

Murder Rock

Genre: Giallo, Slasher

original title: Murderock - Uccide a passo di danza

AKA: Murder Rock: Dancing Death

Director: lucio Fulci

Year: 1984

The owner of a prestigious New York ballet school teams up with a male model to solve a series of bizarre murders of a few of the students

I'm not the worlds greatest Lucio Fulci fan to start with, most of his 'golden period' is a bit take it or leave it with me so I had little expectations for one of his films from as late as '84, however, It turned out to be better than I'd imagined. 

Given the success of Flashdance the year before in typical Italian style they decided to base the plot around a dance school. As you can imagine, the dance scenes are pure cheese with a soundtrack to match it's eightiesness. Also despite being often called a Giallo I'd argue that this sits more comfortably in the slasher genre as the influence of the American films of the time really shows here.

For a fulci film the violence was surprisingly tame. The kills, whilst shot well, barely showed any gore & were always over quickly. Something I cannot deny about Fulci's films are his unique visual style which I have to admire. Here we are treated to a really trippy dream sequence which is the films best shot sequence. 

The first third of the film is pretty entertaining, unfortunately it loses steam shortly after & kind of just fizzles out with a not very believable reveal towards the end. It's not the atrocity I was expecting, quite enjoyable at times yet too many problems throughout really prevent the film from being the entertaining flick that it perhaps should of been.

Rating: ★★½

One sweaty workout.